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The latest patch 5.4 newsBreakfast Topic: Should WoW bring back attunements?
by Scott Carson 
Feb 9th 2011 at 8:00AM
Early raiding in World of Warcraft required wide variety of attunements, from "Hey! Go touch that rock!" to "Hey! Go do every almost raid and dungeon in the expansion!" Over time, many of these attunements were eased or lifted as the playerbase grew and more people were interested in experiencing the current endgame. In Wrath of the Lich King, we had just one fairly minor attunement, and that raid was in the initial tier of raiding for the expansion. The only real attunement since The Burning Crusade has been to reach the level cap and learn to perform well enough to not get kicked from the group.
As we look to the future of raiding, maybe we should look to the past as well. While attunements could often be time-consuming, many of them were completed by just playing the game normally, with some added direction beyond "kill mobs to collect phat lewts." Several attunements added much of the epicness that long-time players say that the game has lost over the past two years or so. Attunement quest chains also introduced us to a host of interesting characters and often fleshed out the lore behind the raid we were trying to gain access to at the time.
Given the current state of the game, could attunements return to the World of Warcraft? Better yet, should attunements return?
| Yes | |
|---|---|
| No | |
| Yes, but only for raiding content |
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 7)
Blixkreeg Feb 9th 2011 8:44AM
No. What functional purpose would they really serve? Everything that Blizzard should do should have a rational purpose. What's the point of having a bottleneck to progression that isn't necessarily difficult and is primarily just a time sink? A lot of the reasons people have posted here seems to me like they haven't bothered to read the quest text in the zones ("give us a reason to be there in a raid other than "bloodthirsty treasure hunters"!) or they're just masochistic.
Is it to prepare people for raiding? If people are not capable of effectively participating in a raid, how exactly does attunement do that? Doing a ton of repeated quests or touching a stone doesn't prepare anyone for raiding. Blizzard has done well in including raiding-like dungeon battles; that should do more to prepare people for raiding than any old attunement. If people suck at raiding, kick them out and make sure to not reward them. People are better at keeping failure in check than an attunement mechanism that has being fail at WoW as an afterthought.
Is it to add lore? You want more lore than the epic quest lines you're participating in before entering dungeons attached to that zone!? Stop leveling up through dungeons and actually read the quest text before finishing up a zone.
Is attunement a bottleneck to keep out simple, bloodthirsty treasure hunters? What, isn't that the intent of becoming attuned, so you can then be the bloodthirsty treasure hunter? Again, that is a reason (a badly thought out one, at that), not an excuse for the bump in the road.
All attunements do is cause further whining and detours from discussing genuine concerns in the game. There's no need to further punch yourself in the balls; the raid bosses tend to do that well enough to the vast majority of raiders on their own.
Blixkreeg Feb 9th 2011 8:47AM
I should further note that giving reason to enter a dungeon is all Blizzard's responsibility. If they add a dungeon that has absolutely no lore behind it, that's their fault. Adding attunements isn't necessarily the answer unless you're primarily talking about requiring a completion of a quest chain in order to allow entrance into a dungeon. I can see and understand that -- it makes sense. A lot of the attunements required in the past, however, are simply ridiculous.
Avan Feb 9th 2011 9:01AM
Do tell me where I can find the quests associated with Blackwing Descent, Baradin Hold, and Throne of the Four Winds.
Bastion of Twilight is backed by a third of the quests in Twilight Highlands. We're given a reason to go kill him; he has the Hammer of Twilight and that's not good for us. (And his gronn kicked us off a mountain.)
Meanwhile, there is no such lore for the other three raids I mentioned. Yes, not even Throne of the Four Winds. There are quests in Uldum that deal with Siamat and how he's empowering the Neferset tol'vir, yes. But that thread is wrapped up by sending us to the Lost City. Vortex Pinnacle, we're told to go rescue some NPC or something. Throne of the Four Winds? The only reason we have to go there is because they're wind people being mentioned by the other wind people that we've already killed. That's like hearing a henchman talk about someone else and immediately assuming that person is involved in these nefarious plots, and going to go kill them without any further investigation.
Jaq Feb 9th 2011 8:45AM
Not just no, but hell no. There are too many grinds you have to do to be the best you can-grinding gear, grinding rep, grinding professions-that adding attunement grinds would just be too much. And besides, they're kind of absurd anyway. Imagine attuning in fiction:
"Men of Minas Tirith! The forces of the Dark Lord face us right there, on the Pelennor Fields, but we will not falter and...what's that Bob? You're not attuned? Haven't done the Battle of Helm's Deep yet? Sigh, okay, fine, we'll go get Bob attuned, Sauron's not going anywhere..."
Attunements are silly, and only appeal to people who REALLY like to grind and those who were there and suffered through it and liked it then.
Blixkreeg Feb 9th 2011 8:50AM
What, you dropped out of Harvard, Bill Gates? Sorry, buddy, but you gotta get attuned to enter our money bin.
Hell Kaiser Feb 9th 2011 8:47AM
Any kind of attunement would be nice. For example for the first tier, clear all dungeons on Heroic difficulty. When the next tier comes out, and include new dungeons, you have to clear them on heroic to unlock the new raid tier.
Put simply.
Clear all new Heroics = Access to the current raid tier.
Second raid tier include new set of Heroics, clear those on heroic = Access to the new raid tier.
Bukinara Feb 9th 2011 8:49AM
Not this again.
Sure, attunements. And bury them in something terrible and grindy, like... archaeology. Will that satisfy the masochists?
Cyrus Feb 9th 2011 8:50AM
One purpose of attunements is to make sure you have the basic skills and gear required for the instance, so you don't get frustrated and waste everyone's time. The gear level check serves the same purpose. It could be improved, but it accomplishes the basic idea. Another purpose is to make sure that players see the lore, the storylines in quests, so you find out why you're actually fighting the bosses in that raid. I'm not sure how good that reason is - those who care about storylines would do the quests even if they weren't required to raid, those who don't care would grind through the quests without reading the text, let's be honest, we're really in raids for the loot - and even if it is worthwhile, there's not much reason to require it for every character. These attunements could be used, but if so, really should be bind on account.
But there's another purpose to attunements: to make sure you have skills and gear required for the instance, and not just in a basic, general sense, but specific to that instance. The attunements for Onyxia's Lair, Karazhan and the Black Temple rewarded resistance gear that you'd wind up using quite a bit in those places. They weren't all the resistance gear you needed by themselves, but they helped a lot, especially while learning the fights. And the Aces High! quest wasn't required for the Eye of Eternity, but it should have been; it was the only way to practice using those red drakes.
That last kind of attunement I'd definitely support. They don't need to hold our hands too much - no need for a "kill the Magmaw Jr.!" quest or something - but it would be cool to have that kind of thing again.
Boobah Feb 9th 2011 1:29PM
"The attunements for Onyxia's Lair, Karazhan and the Black Temple rewarded resistance gear that you'd wind up using quite a bit in those places."
I never ran Onyxia or Black Temple at level but... Karazhan? Really? Who wore resistance gear in Kara? And what would this gear be resistant to? Despite it being an undead-themed raid, it didn't particularly favor any particular type of damage, especially if it meant dropping actual tanking/DPSing/healing stats the way resistance gear tends to.
There are bosses in there that could make resistance gear useful, I suppose; arcane resistance for the Curator's offtank, shadow resistance for Netherspite, fire resistance for Illhoof's imp-squisher, and frost resistance for Aran's Blizzard and elementals. I'm just not aware of anyone in any of my raids ever gearing in that way, although admittedly one of the guilds I raided with wouldn't even attempt Illhoof without a Warlock specced into Nether Protection (which was far, far more potent than today's version.)
BadAndyMk3 Feb 9th 2011 9:32AM
Nope. If people want long epic endgame quests with a fulfilling reward, Bliz should add long epic endgame quests with a fulfilling reward.
I don't want to have to solve a rubix cube before I play Monopoly either.
Name Anon Feb 9th 2011 8:52AM
There is nothing worse than a tank at the start of a heroic saying "I have not been here before." then proceeding to wipe the group because he pulls the wandering boss with trash mobs too close and wipes the group. Or pulls the boss without waiting for an explanation and wipes the group because the have no clue what the boss does.
I know most bosses have extra abilities in heroic dungeons, however, I think at the absolute least, the perosn must have down the regular version of the instance before they can do the heroic. This is what Blizzard did for Magister's terrace and it worked pretty well.
As for raids, this becomes trickier because Blizzard's current policy for getting gear for Justice and Valor points will mean that people can gear up for the current tier of raiding via heroics. The attunement process needs to be something meaningful yet something that is not insane to do. In truth while the BC attunements for raids took some time, I'm not really sure they were that far out of line, however, the BC style won't work under the current gear from points policy.
For raids, any attunement that doesn't require completing stuff in the previous teirs of raids, or for the first tier of raids in an expansion, stuff in heroics, had better have a lot of decent lore around it. Maybe the first tier of an expansion should require completion of all the heroics that came with the expansion. For the second tier of raiding in the expansion, either complete the previous tier of raiding or complete all the heroics dungeons including the ones released with the second tier of raiding. That presumes Blizzard releases at least 3 new heroic dungeons with each tier of raiding.
Thanaxas Feb 9th 2011 8:56AM
I'd rather the attunement be something more like the Temple of AQ war effort.
Not something hardcore grindeable by any means even with the most hardcore guilds in the server, but something that can be done semi casually as a whole server (perhaps with both factions having differing objectives)
WoWie Zowie Feb 9th 2011 8:57AM
the attunements quests in BC certainly did bring an epicness and lore to the game that ICC really did not (imo).
-however-
the tradeoff was that you were limited to who you could bring to these things. i myself was still trying to kill fathom lord karathress for the quest chain while my guild was doing tempest keep and black temple. there was no way to say "o ok you have advanced beyond the difficulty of the quest you can have retroactive credit and be caught up with your raid".
and no, forming a PUG for SSC is all but out of the question.
anyway, i thought ulduar was done pretty darn well as far as lore and epicness goes. there's proof that you don't need to have an attunement in order to be immersed in the story. on the flipside, i felt and still feel that the kara key attunement was an artificial roadblock into raiding that kept some really nice players out of raiding simply because they weren't in x or y progression guild and therefore had a hard time finding competent players to group up with.
ejunk Feb 9th 2011 9:00AM
I don't see any reason to not have a quest chain leading up to a raid. I think reputation grinds are stupid, but quest chains are fun, informative and not terribly difficult.
nadra Feb 9th 2011 9:00AM
attunements are a good way of sorting out the bads from raids as the lazy slackars and scrubs usually wont be able to do them. but id not want long attunments put back into the game as the old L70 raids are a good source of income for me and some other ppl i play with. basically we advertise BT or SSC in trade get enough ppl and run it. when loot drops i have masterloot enabled and just take everthing there is. if one of the ppl in the raid wants the item its 200g and i hand it over. a lot of will ppl pay it if they really want the item ^^
(cutaia) Feb 9th 2011 12:11PM
I've never seen someone so proud of being a douche...
caeres Feb 9th 2011 9:05AM
I'd like attunements if they made sense with what they were trying to accomplish. endless rep grinds are fun for those who enjoy them, but stuff like the frozen halls heroic progression is great for everyone.
You cant do halls of reflection without having done pit of saron
You cant do pit of saron without doing forge of souls
etc etc.
This is good attunement. hell if they said do this 5 man heroic before you can raid id be all for that sort of attunement.
Hal Feb 9th 2011 9:03AM
What if the attunements were part of the heroic dungeons? You're unlikely to take a character straight into raiding right after hitting the level cap; perhaps the heroic version of the dungeons would provide small quest chains for attunement. Then, when the content is obsolete (say, by the next expansion), you just drop the attunement requirement.
Brraains Feb 9th 2011 9:07AM
How bout this idea for attunement: anybody can wander over to the raid entrance/ be summoned to it, but give the epic attunement quest chain that, at the end, gives you some item (preferably in your key bag) that can port you straight to the entrance? seems like best of both to me. those who don't have the time/ don't care can just raid, those who want to do the lore can and get something tangible for it. plus, you'd just need 2 to get the item then they could summon the rest.
Janorfton Feb 9th 2011 9:06AM
Blizzard has kept in an attunement: leveling to 85. Many view leveling as just a hurdle of mindlessly blitzing through quests and not becoming immersed in the journey.
If some people only want to do end game then let them be able to create 85's of any class.
If some people want to level to 85 but not take a long time let them choose an accelerated leveling rate, which is what we have now.
For those that want to be immersed in the journey make it so that they don't out-level a zone half way through it. Bring back the original leveling rate.You say go back and finish the zones at 85? There's no fun in steamrolling over the content.
They should bring back attunements and do as they did before. Just make them not required once the next patch content rolls out.